Six days after being fired as the University of New Orleans' chancellor, Tim Ryan looked laid-back, sitting in his Lakeview home in a red polo shirt, tan slacks and moccasins, which he wore without his trademark vibrant socks.

View full sizeRusty Costanza, The Times-PicayunePaperwork for renovation of the University of New Orleans Administration Building got no response from the system office in Baton Rouge for four months, according to former UNO Chancellor Tim Ryan.

Don't be fooled.

Ryan, 60, was talking at his usual rat-a-tat pace as he tried to explain to a visitor what, in the absence of a clear reason, might have led to his dismissal from the job he held for nearly seven years.

In the absence of a definitive explanation from LSU System President John Lombardi, who has declined to discuss Ryan's departure, Ryan's theory is that he was sacked because he pushed too hard for the school where he earned his undergraduate degree and spent 34 years as a teacher and administrator.

"I tried to push," he said. "I'm not talking about pushing to get extraordinary kinds of things. I'm talking about pushing to get simple answers. And when those answers weren't forthcoming, then it became clear to me that it wasn't going to work."

A case in point, Ryan said, was an attempt to renovate UNO's Administration Building. He sent the required paperwork to the system office in Baton Rouge and heard nothing -- for four months. Ryan said the matter was still unresolved when he was dismissed.

"I'm a big boy," he said. "I understand that I'm going to be told no. Sometimes I think it's stupid. Sometimes I think it's a bad decision. We all work in a corporate environment. If our boss tells us no, it's no."

But, Ryan said, "If you don't get an answer -- you don't get a yes, you don't get a no -- you're in the air. How do I move forward? How do I do my job? There was a pattern of that."

Ryan admitted that he is not the kind of person to swallow hard and accept such behavior.

"I'm not one to sit back and let grass grow under my feet," he said. "I have a tendency to be too blunt. It's gotten me into a lot of trouble."

After years of such treatment, Ryan fired off an e-mail to Lombardi in which he expressed concern about the apparent lack of support for UNO.

"Not only am I not getting support, I'm not getting a response," Ryan said he told Lombardi in his note. "If you're not going to support me and support these initiatives, you need to tell me, and I'll step aside so you can appoint someone you will support."After sending the e-mail, Ryan said, "I told the people close to me in my office, 'You'd better get used to a new boss because this is the end of me.'"

Ryan sent the e-mail on a Friday. Six days later, Lombardi summoned him to Baton Rouge to tell Ryan that he was dismissed.

Although Ryan said he was doing only what he felt was best for UNO, others disagreed.Sometimes he went too far, said Anthony "Tony" Falterman of Napoleonville, a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors who said he supports Lombardi's action.

"Over a number of years, from time to time, members of the board would find out (via the news media) after the fact that things had been done by Ryan," he said. "I don't want to find out in the newspaper that something's been done."

Ryan said that wasn't his fault.

"My job was to inform my boss, John Lombardi, about things that were to be done to the campus," Ryan said.

In fact, he said, Lombardi and Ray Lamonica, the LSU System's general counsel, had chastised chancellors who talked directly to members of the Board of Supervisors.

"We were supposed to go through the system," Ryan said. "I talked to the boss, and, obviously, the information was never relayed it to the board members. When they saw it in the press, they would get upset at me."

Ryan said his difficulties with the LSU System were a manifestation of the longtime animus between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in general, and LSU's Baton Rouge and New Orleans campuses in particular.

When LSUNO -- a name it held until 1974 -- opened in 1958, Ryan said the prevailing view in Baton Rouge was that the school on the Lakefront was going to be college for people who couldn't go to LSU in Baton Rouge or couldn't afford Tulane University's tuition.

View full sizeRusty Costanza, The Times-Picayune'New Orleans needs a major urban research university if this city is ever going to thrive,' former UNO Chancellor Tim Ryan said.

"We were never satisfied with that," Ryan said, "because we felt -- and I feel this very strongly -- that New Orleans needs a major urban research university if this city is ever going to thrive."

In its early years, providing an undergraduate education might have been enough, Ryan said, "but the world has changed, and for a major metropolitan area to thrive and to grow, you need more than just an undergraduate program. You need graduate programs."

This fall, UNO has 2,938 graduate students -- about 26 percent of its total enrollment of 11,288, according to school figures.

Although Ryan has been criticized for what he has called "frictions" with Baton Rouge, he has been praised for his role in spearheading UNO's recovery after Hurricane Katrina. UNO was able to offer online classes in the fall of 2005, and it returned to the Lakefront for the spring.

According to UNO figures, the school has received $110.5 million from government organizations such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as private sources.

The good feelings didn't last. Because UNO had lost students, faculty and staff, its size had to be trimmed. Of about 600 full-time faculty and staff members, 28 people were laid off.

View full sizeMatthew Hinton, The Times-Picayune archiveMoving the UNO athletics program from Division I to Division III created 'a tremendous amount of emotion,' said former Chancellor Tim Ryan, photographed speaking to graduates at Lakefront Arena in May 2009.

Because money was tight and support was almost non-existent, UNO's athletics program dropped from Division I to Division III.

"There was a tremendous amount of emotion around that move," Ryan said. "A lot of people dislike me a great deal because of that. They don't understand the reason the decision was made. They don't understand the bleeding that athletics was doing. We were saying that in order to support (Division I) athletics, we would have had to fire, or not hire, the equivalent of 40 faculty members."

And now, UNO faces more cuts in the state money it receives. Since January 2009, the school has lost about $14.5 million, and administrators have been told to prepare for cuts as deep as 32 percent in the fiscal year that will start July 1. That prospect has sparked two campus protests, one of which briefly turned violent.

"I've never been under so much pressure and worked so hard as over the last year and a half because of these budget cuts," Ryan said.

It has, he said, been worse than struggling to recover from Katrina's damage.

"After Katrina, we all had a common enemy that we could rally against," Ryan said. "We all had adrenaline flowing for months and months. ... People saw why we had to do things after Katrina. They're not seeing that now, so they're angry, and when you're angry, you take it out on whoever's on the top. ...

"We can have a session where we can bitch and whine and moan and say there shouldn't be any cuts. We all believe that. Well, let's get over that. It ain't gonna happen, and so let's move forward."

Beyond teaching an economics course this semester, Ryan, a tenured UNO faculty member, said he doesn't have any plans.

"I still think I have something to offer to higher education in Louisiana," he said. "Obviously, the powers that be don't want me to offer that at UNO."

Despite the grim financial news for UNO, Ryan said he remains optimistic about the school's prospects.

"I continue to be a very, very strong supporter of the university," he said. "I think we can create a university that's more streamlined, more focused and then will ultimately be better. ...

"It's going to take strong leadership to make that happen. ... Nobody likes these kinds of cuts, but if we can survive them and keep the integrity at the core of the university intact, we will be able to be a stronger institution."